Hershiser’s Pitch for Poker

After that summer spent at the Rio, where everything -- politics, sports, oil spills, etc. -- existed only in vague outlines for me while almost all of my attention was on the WSOP, it’s nice to be home where I can read a newspaper and take in a ball game now and then.

Over the weekend I did both. I read The New York Times yesterday morning, then watched some of that exciting St. Louis-Chicago game on ESPN last night. One article I saw in the NYT yesterday was an interview with former major league great Orel Hershiser, who was, in fact, part of the announcing team for the Cards-Cubs game.

And yeah, poker came up. Which is why I am mentioning it here.

The article was quite short -- just eight questions -- in which the interviewer, Joe Brescia, mostly asks Hershiser about baseball, including questions about his announcing gig, his career, and for his thoughts concerning the current status of pitching today. The last question, though, is about poker.

“You are an avid poker player,” Brescia begins. “You’ve beaten a few legends, including Ted Forrest, Allen Cunningham, and Freddy Deeb.” Brescia refers, of course, to that surprising run Hershiser had in the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship before finally losing to Andy Bloch in the Round of 16. Not quite as remarkable as pitching a major-league record 59 consecutive scoreless innings -- as Hershiser did to conclude that wondrous, Cy Young Award-winning 1988 season -- but a nifty feat, nonetheless.

Brescia then asks Hershiser “How do you explain your success?” In fact, Hershiser has had more success in poker than we saw at that 2008 NBC event. He cashed in the 2010 NAPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure event. He’s also done fairly well in some of the WCOOP events on PokerStars, including final tabling the 2008 $10,000 buy-in High-Roller NLHE event (finishing ninth).

I remember seeing Hershiser at the NAPT Venetian event I helped cover in February of this year. (That is a picture of him from that event above, by the way, taken by Joe Giron.) If you look closely, you can see he has a signed baseball sitting in front of him. He eventually gave that as a souvenir to the person who knocked him out near the end of Day 2. That’s become a custom for Hershiser. I know he gave one to Annette Obrestad when she knocked him out of the first round the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship this past spring, and Obrestad -- not a big baseball fan -- wasn’t quite sure what it was about.

Anyhow, I really like Hershiser’s response to the question. First of all, he doesn’t get carried away with the idea of his “success” in poker, which he obviously understands has been quite modest. Secondly, he immediately makes a distinction between poker and other gambling games that I like hearing made.

“When I moved to Las Vegas,” Hershiser begins, “poker was something to do to stay away from gambling. That sounds funny, but I mean roulette and blackjack and all the places where the house has the edge. But in poker, it’s man against man and everyone has equal footing.”

Hershiser here articulates an idea -- both succinctly and effectively, I think -- that should be familiar to anyone who has ever thought seriously about poker. Namely that while poker is gambling, or at least involves a chance element, it is also much, much different from other forms of gambling in which the skill component is severely muted or missing entirely.

Hershiser goes on to suggest an analogy from baseball which is also fitting and helps illustrate how poker does indeed involve genuine skill and competition. “It’s like pitching,” says Hershiser. “It’s the same outline. What position am I in? Was this guy aggressive last time? Do I need to disguise my hand? I think I can bluff him. And at 51 years old, competing on my rear end when my body is shutting down is not bad.”

That game-within-the-game between pitcher and batter can indeed be very similar to the heads-up battles that emerge at a table full of players. In both cases the match-up involves players employing various skill sets against one another but also engaging in an intellectual battle, too.

I do appreciate Hershiser out there helping explain and represent poker in such a way. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill this week that distinction between poker and other forms of gambling will be set aside as H.R. 2267, the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act goes into what is called the “markup” phase before it gets voted on by the House Financial Services Committee tomorrow.

If the bill receives a favorable committee vote -- which Kevmath says “appears too close to call” -- H.R. 2267 will then move on to the entire House of Representatives for its consideration. The bill would still need to be passed by the House, then the Senate, then signed into law by the President. Meaning we’re still quite a long way away from any significant changes for online gambling in the U.S., I’d imagine.

It’s an interesting moment for poker, I think. H.R. 2267 is designed to set up a licensing and regulatory scheme for the operation of online gambling sites in the United States. It makes no distinctions between poker and other forms of gambling, and so the further this bill moves along -- with the full support of the Poker Players Alliance, by the way -- the more poker’s supporters will be necessarily grouped with those supporting making other forms of gambling more available to Americans.

Thus will arguments about poker being a “skill game” have to be set aside in the context of debates about this particular bill. Annie Duke did just that, actually, in her statement before the House Financial Services Committee last week, talking more specifically about individual liberty than about poker per se.

From a practical point of view, I guess it doesn’t matter too much that poker gets folded in with other forms of gambling. Such will always be the case, and when it comes to legislators, attempts to distinguish poker as a “skill game” and therefore perhaps make it seem more acceptable to some from a moral standpoint are mostly going to be in vain, anyway.

Still, as I say, I do appreciate the distinction Hershiser makes when describing why he likes poker. A pitch worth making, I think.

The Search for Unambiguous Proof of Poker Playing Prowess

Have to say, am getting along real, real nice with poker at the moment. Both playing & following the pros’ adventures.

As far as playing goes, I ended up with a decent February (by my short-stacked standards), and a have enjoyed a good first couple of days of March, too. Once again had a fun time donating over at Saturdays with Pauly, this time finishing 16th of 38. That makes three for three making the final table before the final table. Whazzat prove? That yr humble servant needs to sharpen his tourney skills, probably. (Am gonna plead small sample size.)

This time around I played some with super-blogger-tourney-creator AlCantHang, Amy C, Change100, among others. Couldn’t get anything going early on, and ended up just folding a lot and taking a couple of small pots for the first hour. Then shortly after the first break, I had slipped down below 900 chips when I picked up K-J-T-8 double-suited and decided to go with it. Managed to double through there, then chip up to 2,200 or so by the middle of Level 6. That put me close to the middle of the pack -- 13 of 23 remaining.

Then came a hand in which a short-stacked player UTG pushed his last 700 in the middle. I was in MP with -- another nice PLO starter -- and went ahead and reraised pot to isolate. No one else came along, and so before the flop our cards were turned over. He held -- a pretty nice match-up for me. The flop of made things even nicer. I was a huge favorite -- like 86% (according to the CardPlayer Omaha calculator). But a jack on the turn and a deuce on the river gave the hand to my chip-challenged opponent. I was back down to 1,500 or so, and with blinds at 100/200, time was running short.

Was forced to fold a full round, including both blinds, and so was down to 1,180 when I picked up on the button. With one limper in (plus one of the blinds who had started the hand with 105), I decided just to limp in as well to see what the flop brought. Flop came , and the early limper bet pot (705). Didn’t need much time to know what to do. Besides the diamond draw, I’d flopped one of those nice wraps where any eight, jack, queen, or king would give me the nut straight. If I’m adding ’em up correctly, that means 19 outs altogether. I pushed my remaining chips in the middle, got the call, and our cards were flipped over.

Was hoping not to see a better diamond draw, and I didn’t. Indeed, only one diamond appeared in either of my opponents’ hands -- that of the early limper who held . (The tiny-stacked guy in the blinds had 6-J-3-7, no diamonds.) I’m about 67% to win this sucker and get back into contention. But none of those 19 outs came, and I was done. Nice to be getting my money in good, but I have to start accumulating some chips earlier on in these things so I don’t have to win everytime I do.

Meanwhile, I have been motoring back and forth between PLO25, H.O.R.S.E., Razz, and Stud/8 (the latter three at $0.50/$1.00). Moving around from game to game has really kept up my interest and enjoyment. And I do think playing the other games regularly is helping me make better reads at the PLO tables. Not completely sure why, but I think it has to do with the way frequently switching games forces me to concentrate a little more.

As far as following the pros goes, it’s been an especially interesting few days with the conclusion of the WPT L.A. Poker Classic and the NBC Heads-Up Championship. I give CardPlayer a hard time here from time to time, but I’m going to go ahead and echo Pokerati Dan and commend CardPlayer for its coverage of the goings-on over at Caesar’s. Good stuff.

Was surprised like everyone else to see Orel Hershiser mow down Forrest, Cunningham, and Deeb like so many light-hitting shortstops. Saw them starting to fret over on 2+2 about what the “general view” -- of the non-poker playing public, I guess -- would be if Hershiser were to have gone all the way.

I personally don’t think these things mean a whole heck of a lot, ultimately -- not being “good for poker” or “bad for poker” or anything, really. If Hershiser had won, I suppose we might've heard Frank DeFord wax poetic on NPR about the Cy Young award-winning pitcher’s inordinate acumen helping him make an easy transition to a less-athletic, more-cerebral (?) realm. (Actually, we still might if DeFord can’t find anything better to yammer on about this week.) But most of the world probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Meanwhile, for those who want to view Hershiser’s accomplishment as proof that heads-up tournaments are all luck, Chris Ferguson’s run to a third final in four years (and finally winning this time) seems like it would disprove that thesis. Of course, I could be wrong. Heard Haralabos Voulgaris on Big Poker Sundays yesterday restate how the luck factor in heads-up tourneys outweighs all. As he put it, “these are like regular tournaments on a hundred times steroids in terms of luck.”

I ain’t gonna spend too much energy challenging the idea that luck is involved in these things. Still, for a guy to win 16 of 19 matches (as Ferguson has done over the past four years) is pretty remarkable, ain’t it? Of course, like my brief Saturdays with Pauly career, we’re still talking too small a sample size to “prove” anything . . . .

Even so, I’ll go ahead and say it: Jesus is more than just all right.